Re: CPNC Programming Resources

I snipped most of the good stuff out of these two posts in an effort to get
to the ideas that I want to extend.

>Message: 3 [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Digest Number 488
> From: psp@...
>Subject: Re: Re: CPNC Programming Resources
>

<snip>

>As Matt Shaver noted, there is a significant body of EMC GUI work already in
>existence. The NIST TkEMC GUI that Ray Henry modified and had on display at
>NAMES is very well done and would be an excellent base for CPNC extensions.
>

>Message: 4 [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Digest Number 488
> From: Ron Ginger <ginger@...>
>Subject: Re: Conversational programming in Perl for EMC
>

<snip>

>Note, that if we use perl, or whatever we use, EMC wont be part of the
>picture on Win or Mac systems. The only way to support a CPNC on them
>would be to use one of the serial line devices like FlashCut or Simple
>Step, or a driver like INDEXER.LPT. Then all the perl code has to do is
>read/write to a serial port.
>
>Even under unix we will only need a small subset of the emc functions in
>perl. I expect CPNC to have very few calls to its driver level- not much
>more than move((X,Y,Z) or feed(X,Y,Z) or get(X,Y,Z), maybe an abort and
>init. It would be nice of course to have the entire range of emc
>function available to perl, but to do CPNC I dont expect to need them.

My concern is that we unnecessarily limit CPNC by making decisions that
narrow it's scope or flexibility.

As a devil's advocate I could say that I'm a hobby machine operator and
don't need hard and soft limits or accurate home, or soft-set paths around
fixtures or holders. Why do I need tool numbers since I change them by hand.

Once we settle on language(s), we really need to consider how CPNC fits
into the total machine operating process, regardless of the complexity of
the machine to which it is applied. In the mean time we need to keep
separate the nc code from the machine operating code in our thinking.

For example:

1 - If CPNC generates the rs232 serial code or the parport code, then we
need a way to inject into that bitstream the other machine codes that are
not a direct part of CPNC but are needed by the operator to run a FlashCut,
EMC, or whatever's out there driven machine.

2 - Or we need to expand CPNC with machine specific stuff.

3 - Or we need to make provision to pass the CPNC generated code through
some other gui/file/box that allows operator intervention and parsing of
the CPNC code for the specific machine to which this other thing is connected.

4 - ?

It's the vision thing. How does CPNC fit into the bigger picture? Or is
CPNC the bigger picture?

Ray